Right smack in the middle of a much, much higher density of matter than the single hydrogen atom per cubic centimeter he would have encountered out in deep space. The burst of his arrival at Barnard's would have been nothing but a light show. Back here, though… I was no physicist, but even I could imagine the energy gradient coming together when his wave front finally collapsed out there in the lake.
'Kelly,' I said, my voice as calm as I could make it. 'Nick's ship is exploding. It's been exploding for six years, very, very, very slowly-that's what the dimple has been. In three minutes, it's going to explode in real time.'
'He didn't bring the nukes back.' Kelly's voice was dreamy. 'The ship was set to ditch them before reengaging the drive. Just in case he couldn't set them off.'
'Nukes or no nukes, something is blowing up. We have to go, now.' I reviewed the escape routes, paths to higher ground versus how far we could get in my Ford Explorer parked up by the lodge. 'I said no nukes,' Kelly replied absently, still peering through the Celestron.
'To hell with the nukes. He's carrying too much potential energy out there, without a hard vacuum to bleed it off into!'
Agonized, I could hear the smile in her voice. 'The math worked. He got there, he'll get back. I have to be here to meet him.'
She had a scientist's faith in the numbers, damn her-and a lover's faith in the future. 'For Christ's sake, no matter what the numbers tell you, Nick's ship is blowing up. Emerald Lake will be coming down around our heads.' Was there such a thing as a quantum explosion?
'No. We modeled everything. We knew if he got there, he'd get back, and -Hey! Barnard's Star is getting brighter! I can see Nick's lasers!'
'Kelly, come on!' I broke my cardinal rule for dealing with her and tried to force the issue. Grabbing her arm, I pulled her away from the telescope, but she whirled on me. Her fist connected with my jaw.
'I'm not leaving, Bruce. You're afraid, you run.'
And to my shame, I did. The instinct for survival won out, and I found myself scrambling down the ladder and running up the incline away from the lake and the disaster I was almost sure was about to occur. I decided against taking the extra time to find the Ford and get it started and just kept running uphill, for all the seconds left to me, leaving the woman I loved behind with her telescope and her dimple and her long-lost husband.
And then the lake exploded.
I groaned myself awake in a puddle of mud, wondering how long I had been lying there. What had once been Emerald Lake was awash with light, and I heard the chattering of a helicopter in the distance.
I had gotten far enough away. I was alive.
And Kelly almost certainly was not.
About a quarter mile away, I saw the remains of the lodge, splintered timbers rising above a sea of mud, a nightmare landscape of shadows and destruction glowing in a spotlight from above. With all that radioactive lake bottom blown everywhere, this place was a real hot zone now.
I pushed myself up, every joint screaming in protest. Coughing water out of my sinuses, or maybe blood, I turned to head back in the direction of the shore.
A pale glow in front of me turned out to be Marge, finding her way through the debris with a red-filtered flashlight. She was wearing street clothes -a knee-length skirt, for the love of God, out here. 'Glad to see you survived, Bruce.'
And right behind her was Ray Vittori, the project manager from the Canadian Space Agency-who had told us about the radioactivity coming from the dimple in the first place.
And Vittori was in shirtsleeves, despite all the blown mud. God damn was I an idiot. So much for the radionuclides. No wonder my Geiger counters never worked right-they'd had to rig them up back at the agency. Hell, even J could think of three or four ways to fake a dosimeter.
'Nice to see you again, Agent Diedrich,' Vittori said. 'Although the circumstances could certainly be better.'
I just stared at him.
He held out his hand, but it wasn't for a shake. It was palm up, expecting something. 'I'll take those documents now.'
'What-?'
Marge smiled, teeth gleaming pink in the flashlit darkness as she lit a cigarette. 'Microphones, Bruce. You should know better.'
Yeah, I did know better. Passive surveillance was cheap. They could have wired the entire Canadian Rockies for sound during the time I'd been hanging around here.
I looked from Marge to Vittori. Kelly had said I should give the documents to the Canadian people, but I didn't think this was what she had in mind.
'There never was any radioactive fallout.' My voice sounded as dead as I felt.
Vittori shook his head. 'No.'
'But why?'
He shrugged, finally lowering his expectant hand. 'We already had all the data we were going to get from the dimple, Diedrich. All that was left was the woman.'
The woman.
Kelly Maclnnes, a laughing woman who had lived and died for a dream and a long-lost husband.
'Oh, God,' I said, remembering someone else who was dead.
'Sergeant Perry-?'
Marge's expression hardened, and she took another drag on her cigarette. 'Died in a hunting accident, Bruce. Headed the wrong way, you might say.'
Hunting accident. Perry had been ready to say too much. I turned to her with the same question I'd asked Vittori: 'Why?'
'There are plenty of people on both sides of the border who will do a lot for a working star drive.'
For Nick Maclnnes's plans, which we had all rejected twelve years ago. The Canadian who had made it almost all the way home from the stars.
With a sigh, I sat down on a shattered log, cruddy and mossy from the lake. Wedged behind it, I noticed a plastic gas container, the top still on.
'Can I bum a cigarette from you, Marge?'
'You quit years ago.' Her voice was impatient.
'I need one now.' I hugged myself, cold and wet in the dark April night. The envelope crinkled under my shirt, the one accurate record of Maclnnes's cost-effective method of superluminal travel.
Marge held a lit cigarette out to me. I took it. 'Thanks.'
'Now smoke it and let's get going. There are some very important people waiting for you in Washington.'
She turned to Vittori, whispering something I couldn't hear. Cigarette clenched between my lips, I twisted around and unscrewed the cap, pouring the liquid on the ground.
It didn't smell right-muddy lake water. The container must have cracked from the force of the blast. I threw my cigarette into it. The butt fizzled and went out.
'You ready?' Marge asked.
I nodded. Pulling the envelope out of my shirt, I handed it over to the Canadian.
Some Canadian. I couldn't fool myself into thinking that it was what Kelly had wanted.
As we walked toward the helicopter, I realized I could no longer remember the sound of her laugh.
Triceratops Summer
Michael Swanwick
From Gardner Dozois - The Year's Best Science Fiction 23rd Annual Collection (2006)
Michael Swanwick made his debut in 1980, and, in the twenty-five years that have followed, has established himself as one of SF's most prolific and consistently excellent writers at short lengths, as well as one of the premier novelists of his generation. He has won the Theodore Sturgeon Award and the Asimov's Readers Award poll. In 1991, his novel Stations of the Tide won him a Nebula Award as well, and in 1995 he won the World Fantasy Award for his story 'Radio Waves.' He's won the Hugo Award four times between 1999 and 2003, for his stories 'The Very Pulse of the Machine,' 'Scherzo with Tyrannosaur,' 'The Dog Said Bow-Wow,' and 'Slow Life.' His other books include
